History and Masters of Daito-Ryu Aiki Jujutsu

Master Sokaku Takeda

Daito ryu Aiki jujutsu, is a Japanese martial art that became popular in the early 20th century under master Sokaku Takeda. His
most well-known student was Morihei Ueshiba.

Takeda
began teaching his traditional family arts outside of the family in the
late 19th century. He learnt sword and spear arts from his father,
Sokichi Takeda. He was also an uchi-deshi (live-in student) under the
well-known swordsman Sakakibara Kenkichi.

Sokaku traveled
extensively to preserve his family's traditions by spreading Daito-ryu
throughout Japan. His third son, Tokimune Takeda, became the headmaster
of the art following his death in 1943.

Tokimune taught Daito-ryu Aikibudo, that included sword techniques of Ono-ha Itto-ryu and traditional techniques of Daito-ryu. He also created and awarded dan rankings.

Aiki focuses on early control, and teaches throwing techniques and joint manipulations to effectively restrain, or injure an attacker. Of importance is the timing to blend
with or neutralize the effectiveness of an attack, and use the attacker's movement against them.

Daito-ryu
aiki jujutsu is characterized by use of atemi strikes to vital points
on the body, to prepare for joint locking or throwing.

Tokimune Takeda died in 1993 leaving no official successor, but a
few of his high-ranking students, such as Katsuyuki Kondo and
Shigemitsu Kato, now head their own Daito-ryu Aiki jujutsu
organizations.

“ The secret of aiki is to overpower the opponent mentally

at a glance and to win without fighting ”

Sokaku Takeda

Aiki Jujutsu Masters

Master Morihei Ueshiba

Apart from the Aikido of Morihei Ueshiba, there are several
organizations that teach Daito-ryu Aiki Jujutsu, each tracing their
lineage back to master Sokaku Takeda through one of four of his top students...

Daito-ryu
techniques involve both jujutsu and aiki applications.
Techniques are broken up into series, and students only progress to the
next series when they have completely mastered the previous one.

On
completion of each series, a student is awarded a certificate or scroll
that lists the techniques of that level. These act as different levels
of advancement, a common system among classical Japanese
martial arts schools before belts, grades, and degrees system.

Officially, Daito-ryu system is said to include thousands of techniques,
divided into omote (front) and ura (back), but many of these could be
seen as variations of core techniques.

Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido.

Today,
Daito-ryu is the widely practised school of traditional Japanese
jujutsu in Japan. This may be due to the success of Sokaku Takeda's
student Morihei Ueshiba, and Aikido.

Aikido
is practised worldwide and has hundreds of thousands of students. Many
of those interested in aikido have traced the art's origins back to
Daito-ryu, which has increased the level of interest in an art which was
otherwise virtually unknown a few decades before.

The mysterious concept of aiki
is an old one, and was common to other classical Japanese schools of
armed combat. Many modern schools influenced by aikido presently use the
term to describe their use of aikido techniques with a more
combative mindset.

There are a number of martial arts in addition
to aikido which appear, or claim, to be descended from
Daito-ryu or the teachings of Takeda Sokaku. Among them are...

1
- Korean martial art of Hapkido founded by Choi Yong Sul, who as an
orphan in Japan was trained and raised under Takeda Sokaku.